Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a special Technology Day at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The theme of the day was the “Teaching and Learning in Four Dimensions” and focused on the impact that emerging 3D prototyping and immersive technologies are having on the world of fashion and education. The Keynote speakers were W. James Au and Janine Hawkins. James gave an engaging presentation about the principles of Second Life (SL) and how the various user groups interact. Janine is the Editor of Second Style in SL and spoke more specifically about the top designers in SL and how many talented international, especially Japanese, designers are using it to gain recognition and promote their work. I was really struck by just how quickly and profoundly the virtual and real worlds of fashion are converging in the design, commercial and educational realms. You can find an excellent summary of the day’s events on Elaine Polvinen’s Virtual Fashion Technology blog.

The event was organized (exceptionally well, I may add) by Beth Harris, a professor of art history at FIT and a leading proponent of technological innovation in education. Beth originally discovered Cozimo through the web and contacted us to learn more. Since then we’ve developed a close relationship and Beth has shared her considerable experience and passion on the needs of educators. Dealing effectively with rich media is one of her primary concerns and she immediately jumped at the opportunity to experiment with Cozimo’s new WordPress plugin on smARThistory, a blog she maintains with her colleague Steven Zucker.

Thanks to Beth’s invitation, I had the opportunity to meet educators from FIT and other institutions who attended Technology Day. We’ll be setting up full Cozimo accounts for a number of courses in the upcoming semester and we’re looking forward to supporting other educational initiatives they are working on.

Alexandre Renaud is the manager for professional and corporate services at National Animation and Design (NAD) Centre in Montreal, Canada. He’s now incorporated Cozimo as an integral tool to support the training programs he manages.

Hello Alexandre. Why don’t you start off by telling us about the NAD Centre?

The NAD centre is a major Canadian education centre offering high profile training for new media including 3D tools, compositing tools - everything that is related to digital imaging and video production. The centre has two major programs – one is our regular program with 80 full time students in 3D animation, visual effects & video games. The other - that is my department – offers professional and corporate services including intensive training, seminars and consulting services.

How are you using Cozimo?

Our business is to do training so our customers can learn to use tools for creating marketing presentations or design prototypes. In my department we do a lot of remote on-site training and we use Cozimo to provide support to our customers as they start out with their new projects. So Cozimo is really a teaching tool. It lets us review their work in progress and to make sure they are using the correct techniques. We’ve tried some other solutions but Cozimo is really the best because it lets us interact personally with the customers directly on the images and videos they are working on and everything is recorded right there for them to go back to refer to.

Do you have any good customer experiences to share?

We are using Cozimo now with a major corporate customer – Johnson & Johnson Design and Research Department – and the experience is going really well. I just finished a session with myself in one office, my trainer in another and the customer at theirs. We were all able to go through the video they were working on frame by frame, review it, make suggestions. Before Cozimo, we would never be able to offer this kind of support because they would have to come to our office and that would just take too much time. So, yes, they are very happy with this service. It’s very fast and easy to use.

Do you have any specific examples of how Cozimo has helped your business?

Actually, it’s enabling a new service and revenue stream for us - offering ongoing remote support and training. It’s going to be part of all our new contracts. Cozimo is great for this because we can interact directly with the customer and everything is recorded and tracked. Now our customers are getting service that is much more effective and valuable.